Ariel to Prospero -
'...the King's ship, in the deep nook, where once thou call'st me up at midnight to fetch dew from the still-vexed Bermoothes...'
Prospero to Ariel -
'...Hast thou forgot the foul witch Sycorax?
...This blue-eyed Hag was hither brought with child...'
-Shakespeare
-'The Tempest'
. . . .
'You may be a schmatt guy, but you are still the veriest fool.'
Flubber squinted down at Jack, grimacing around his pipe stem. Jack, meanwhile had been so rocked by this supposed 'news' that he hadn't realized how rocked he was, along with the rest of the boat.
'Quiet!' Morgana raised a hand, as she headed into the pilot house and turned up the radio.
Flubber spun a 180 and found himself facing a dark and threatening skyscape upon the horizon. The boat was rocking in earnest now.
'Come on, John! You've got to turn me loose! If a hurricane's coming, we could all die out here!' Jack nodded at the gathering storm. 'I can help.'
Flubber just stared at the black and steadily building stormclouds, saying nothing. The wind began to flog the sails...
'Just tell me this,' Jack said, 'Which side are we on? East or west of the islands?'
John at last dragged his gaze back to Jack. 'The Atlantic, of course...' He finally began to tack back. 'That's where we want to head, Jack...'
'No. Get out of the path of it, John! I've been in hurricanes, man; you can't even stand up!' Jack knew they were doomed; Flubber and Morgana mad as hatters. 'You'll never outrun it, John...they can travel 15 to 25 knots or more--up to 800 miles wide...and the swells...' Jack couldn't hear NOAA, but he could see the storm gaining on them and felt the wind whipping him, lashed as he was to the mast, like a sacrifice to the Sirens...which he was, he now guessed; or to one in particular.
'Reef the sails, John! Please! Let me loose, and I'll do whatever you say, just let me help!'
'"Winds gusting to 40 knots!"' Morgana yelled from the cabin, echoing NOAA warnings.
'Alright! Alright!' John yelled, and, at last, thankfully, unlocked the cuff on Jack and cut the ropes from his legs. 'Reef that bad boy and then just do like I say, alright?' Jack noticed then the Luger John had pointed at his guts. 'Don't forget who's the captain here. A memory lapse would be fatal.'
Jack said nothing but got to work hauling and securing sails now flapping angrily in the wild wind, while John attempted to steer the ship.
'"Winds increasing to 55 knots! Swells reported upwards of 10 meters!"' Morgana reported, doing little else, until she looked up at said swells now nearly half that, and promptly vomited like a big dog...
'"Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!!"' Flubber yelled, completely bughouse.
The storm was upon them.
Jack was glad he couldn't hear the meshugga dementoid now for the roar of the wind and sea. Morgana was on her knees, hugging the doorframe of the pilot house and retching fairly constant now.
He slowly pulled his way along a rope he'd secured, inching closer to John.
'Come about, man! We can still get away from the worst of it!' --Maybe, thought Jack. But heading directly into it was psychotic.
Flubber stood his ground, gun jammed in his belt, and grimaced.
The sound was unbelievable; waves washed over the sides of the yacht, drenching them both. Huge swells, white with foam like mad dogs, broadsided the craft, making it shudder.
'Come about!' Jack held on to the mast, but barely; thinking all had turned to shite. But, looking up, the storm was nothing compared to what he now saw before them, and where they seemed to be headed; inescapably. Utterly. And fatally...
A dark hole had opened up out of the ocean, an unseeing eye that swept the sea around it in tight, inexorable spirals; a giant whirlpool, the mother of all whirlpools, the Whirlpool of the Gods...and into It's hungry maw was where their little craft was surely headed.
. . . .
'Atlantis?'
Emlyn thought on this; she'd read Ignatius Donnelly. Even Samuel Butler's 'Erewhon'. And other fancies...
But, the Sidhe were long-lived, and so their memories and histories must perforce edge near the World's Beginnings. Still...
along the leaf-strewn pathways of gold and crimson.
'As in this future time of which you have spoken, so too, was Atlantis corrupted and, in the end, destroyed by the hubris of men; believing themselves above and apart from those they deemed 'below' them, encluding the planet itself. A great and terrible mistake, that. As Mother Earth will ever remind mankind.'
More and more like Daryl, is this Sidhe Lord, Em couldn't help but think. Is it all in my own mind then?--what I perceive as 'reality'?
'Somewhat, perhaps...' Gwydion leaned about to catch her eye, knowing she knew what he knew, which was what she was thinking.
'Indeed, IF, and a grand IF that be!--If humankind might ever align itself upon fair and equal terms with their bretheren, and naturally and most importantly, with their other and better 'halves': their sorors!--perhaps they may at last realize their true natures and the attendant boons that would entail. Then they would know the Earth as a living, intelligent and Great Being Herself, as are all upon it. They would become Aware, and the very stones would speak to them, teaching them secrets and mysteries long forgotten...'
Emlyn was silent for some while, pondering: the pyramids, and Stonehenge. Someone, some Time had such knowledge, obviously.
As she breathed in the clear, sweet air about them, scented with the damp earth and leaves, she felt she was but upon an Island of the natural world, while all about her, men carved great jagged gashes into the heart of mother earth, there to wrench forth her minerals to create more machines; for enrichment of the few and to the exhaustion of the factory workers...green growing things trampled and uprooted, leaving only a vast empire of steel and iron, choked with smoke and poison...a vision of hell, it was...
'Daryl, my guardian, would say that people are only driven to prejudice by fear. Fear of not having enough; fear of the foreign usurper,' Em mused aloud.
'Yes,' sighed Gwydion, 'Fear brought about by stark ignorance...those who know, sayeth not, while those who knoweth nought, speak both loud and long. Ignorance, alas, begets only more and more ignorance. And ultimate violence. So goes your world.'
Em stiffened. 'And, to us then, our due? If others know better, why say they not, then?'
'"I danced upon the Sabbath, and was hung upon a Tree..."' Gwydion sang. 'There are those who know. And knowing what was done to those had gone before, who also knew, they kept their silence, and so, their heads.'
Em sighed in her turn. She bethought then of Daryl, and what had become of him, as a Cathar...and One who Knew...couldn't argue with that. 'Is there never hope for my world?'
'There is always hope, my Lady Love.' Gwydion squeezed her waist to him, and kissed her hair. 'But, I see that the graces of Caer Gwydion are no match for your fevered brain. You are a singular one, now! Most are utterly enchanted by my realm! You would bring your world with you, to rub elbows 'til most raw and chapped, against mine here! I had hoped to entrance you, and to give you some pleasure, beauty and peace...'
'I am enraptured, My Lord...or I'd not have remained with you so long in this place...' Em smiled to herself; to be 'reassuring' the Lord of the Sidhe! 'Still, I feel we are but within the eye of the hurricane here, whilst frenzied winds do rage all about us...'
'That will never do!' Gwydion purred in her ear, as his hand went from Emlyn's waist to her hair, and stroked her long elf-locked mane of scarlet, down to her thigh, and ran a hand along it, shocking her senses.
'You have been too long in my company alone, perhaps...Oh, yes! Though it pains me, I see I cannot be your All-in-All; even I, the Lord of the Cambrian Sidhe, the Twyleth Teg, must seek beyond myself to keep my Lady best-pleased...
'I have it: we shall have a ball, to-night! A costume ball! And there will be such music, drink and dancing as never you have dreamed!'
And declaring thus, Gwydion nudged his fair Gwen into a gallop that took them fast, far and beyond all thought or care of mundane things.
. . . .
..::I must away Love
I can no longer tarry
The morning Tempest
I have to cross--
I will be guided
Without a star, now
Into the arms that
I love the best::..
-I Must Away, Love
-Halali
. . . .
Ferdinand:
Though the seas threaten,
They are merciful
I have cursed them without cause.
Shakespeare's 'The Tempest'
* * * *
Jack had managed to get Morgana, who had fainted, clipped into a harness, noting that water had drenched all computers; radar and electronics fried. Amazed that Flubber kept an old VHF radio, he put his ear upon the speaker and was somehow able to get a weak signal from Maritime Radio on the old dinosaur, for all the good that would do them now... Emerging from the cockpit, Jack was knocked to his knees by another frothing mountain of water...
When he could see again, he was wishing he couldn't: they had lost all control of the craft and were caught in the maelstrom now, circling ever-nearer the great Mouth of the Monster which swallowed all in it's path... Flubber had lashed himself to the helm; not that it did any good, the rudder busted long since.
The daft idjit had at last been bashed senseless and flopped about like a ragdoll. Jack had realized long before, that Flubber had relieved him of all he'd had on him, encluding his homing device, which was now rendered inoperable, if not washed overboard.
Jack now secured a line to himself and the cockpit, and as the boat neared the awesome Black Hole, he shook his head thinking that he'd never expected to go this way; enemies all around, and without even a friend to speak a farewell to. He hung his head and decided to forgive them all...his father, Daryl, even freaking Flubber and Morgana...he didn't want any chains holding him to this mortal coil...he raised his head, his salty tears blending with the ocean drenching him.
Ah, Emlyn...if she only knew his last thoughts were of her...
. . . .
--'Jack!' He thought he heard a voice calling in the wind. He must be addled...
'JACK!!' He did hear something! Louder, more insistent. He suddenly felt arms reach out grasping his, cutting the rope which held him onboard. He felt himself being hauled upward--
--into the arms of Yeats!
'Good gods, man! I can't turn my back for a minute, can I?' Yeats, now drenched by Jack, smiled grimly at him.
Jack hadn't time or energy to register anything else; he looked down, just in time to see the yacht sail spinning into the abominable Black Maw and become swallowed out of sight...
He vaguely noted an opening in the bottom of a craft above them and himself being heaved inside by Yeats.
His battered body and senses were at last at the end of his reserves though, and as he lay on the floor of the craft in a pool of seawater, his eyes went up into his head as his eyelids fluttered, and Jack's racing brain was stilled awhile, at long last.
Mr. Yeats leaned back on his elbows, panting and soaked to the bone;
'You're welcome,' he said.
. . . .
WATCH Halali-- I Must Away, Love
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2KgbgGzL2A
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